Interview Questions

Heather, Gretchen and Zoe are going to kill me for this one, but it was cute...

Yesterday, we had a 5th anniversary lunch for one of the developers on our team.  One of the other developers related the following story about his internal interview.

First a bit of a word about internal interviews.  We interview internal candidates for positions, just like we interview external candidates - the internal candidate carries a bit of history forward, but they can be just as grueling, both for the interviewee and the interviewer (especially if they're new and interviewing someone more senior).

In this case, the interviewee came into the office, and the interviewer asked him a coding question (yup, we get them too).

"Design a vector template class, with the following operators and characteristics..."

The interviewer was stunned at the response:

"No.  That's a horrible way of doing it, it wouldn't make sense."

It totally took the interviewer by surprise.  What do you do when the person you're interviewing refuses to answer your question?

Well, in this case, he gave him a hire recommendation - the interviewee was totally right, the question he was asked was completely arbitrary and he gave great reasons why it was a poor solution to the problem.  They moved on to other things and, as I mentioned, the guy was hired into our group.

Btw, I would NOT recommend doing this on your interview, unless you REALLY knew what you were doing.  For everyone who gets away with stuff like this, there are a dozen who don't.

But it was kinda funny.  I'd have loved to see the expression on the interviewers face.